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Pro-immigrant marches failed, despite what poll says
By Roger E. Hernandez
July 24, 2006

Did the May 1 pro-immigrant protests change anything? Not for the good, that's for sure.

Among the march organizers were members in good standing of the extremist left, like A.N.S.W.E.R. and the Korea Truth Commission, which supports Kim Jong Il's insane Stalinist regime. Street gangs such as the Latin Kings got involved, too.

Moderate organizers should have either kicked the radicals out or called off the march altogether.

They did not. So they ended up getting swamped. In the mainstream media and the blogosphere, pictures of immigrants waving U.S. flags competed for public attention with pictures of radicals flying upside-down U.S. flags — and one does not have to be an expert in public opinion to know which one had more dramatic effect.

Even though the majority of marchers simply proclaimed they wanted to be Americans too, today you can still find anti-immigrant (YES, anti-immigrant and not just anti-illegal-immigrant) Web sites using those photos to justify their rants.

As to those moderate organizers, where are they?

The actual rationale for the marches still makes sense: Some sort of earned legalization is the only moral and practical way out of the illegal immigration mess. But the organizers who wanted marchers to say only that — without carrying "Go back to Europe" signs — have been less than politically effective, to put it charitably.

Or, to put it uncharitably, their effectiveness has been exactly zero. You could even argue it's in negative numbers. Obstructionists in the House, emboldened by the moderates' failure to disassociate the march from left-wing extremists, have halted progress on the president's earned-legalization proposal by holding hearings in various places across the country this summer, featuring lots of testimony from anti-immigrant fanatics.

Which is why it is hard to fathom what people were thinking in a poll of Latinos released recently by the Pew Hispanic Center.

Almost two-thirds (63 percent) of respondents said the marches signaled "the beginning of a new Hispanic/Latino social movement that will go on for a long time." The response was pretty much the same regardless of income, education, ability to speak English or nation of birth, Pew said. That means acculturated U.S.-born Hispanics as well as conservative Cubans agreed. Only self-described Hispanic Republicans were slightly less sanguine, and even 52 percent of them said a new political movement was born with the marches.

Where is that movement now, just under three months later? The radical left failed to take control of the moderate pro-immigrant organizations, but not a single moderate pro-immigrant group has become more visible as a result of the march. Nothing has come out of those protests other than the reinforcement of stereotypes.

Even more cluelessly, 52 percent thought the marches had a positive effect "on the way the rest of the American public thinks about illegal or undocumented immigrants."

Who, exactly, thought better of President Bush's legalization plan after the marches? Even moderates backed off after seeing one too many Che T-shirts. At least English-dominant Hispanics are more aware of the protest's impact on the American public. Only 32 percent believed the marches had a positive impact, compared with 64 percent who are Spanish-dominant.

The respondents were right about one other thing, though: 54 percent said the debate over immigration policy has made Latino discrimination more of a problem.

It's getting to be time for the House to end its fake hearings, pass Bush's proposal and solve once and for all the problem of illegal immigration.

— Roger E. Hernandez is a syndicated columnist and writer-in-residence at New Jersey Institute of Technology.